Lou Reed: A life Reviewed By Dr. Wesley Britton of Bookpleasures.com

Dr. Wesley Britton

Reviewer Dr. Wesley
Britton: Dr. Britton is the author of four non-fiction books on
espionage in literature and the media. Starting in fall 2015, his new
six-book science fiction series, The Beta-Earth Chronicles, debuted
via BearManor Media. For seven years, he was co-host of online
radio’s Dave White Presents where he contributed interviews with a
host of entertainment insiders. Before his retirement in 2016, Dr.
Britton taught English at Harrisburg Area Community College. Learn
more about Dr. Britton at hisWEBSITE

Yes,
the line above was the title of Lou Reed’s 1972 hit single, certainly
his most famous, most popular song. The sentence can also serve as a
succinct summation of the life of the singer/songwriter/ guitarist who
spent many years immersed in New York’s wild side, especially during the
1970s. The line can also serve as a summary of rock critic and Reed
confidante Anthony DeCurtis’s 2017 biography of a figure DeCurtis knew
well for many years.

Speaking of many years, I’m happy to admit Reed got on my radar screen all the way back in 1967 when The Velvet Underground and Nico was
released. I was apparently one of the 30,000 listeners who had a copy
of the LP with the original Andy Warhol peel-off banana skin cover.
Through the ‘70s, I was aware of Reed’s connections with the “glam rock”
and punk-rock circles including David Bowie and Mick Ronson, of Reed’s
close association with hard drugs, and his very public intimacy with
the gender-benders of New York’s gay and trans-sexual populations. But I
had only a surface awareness of these aspects of Reed’s public and
private life, nothing like the detailed depths revealed in DeCurtis’s
very surprising journalism.

While I owned some of Reed’s 20 solo albums released between 1972 and 2009, Rock and Roll Animal
being my absolute favorite, I never had the depth of knowledge or
insight into Reed’s music DeCurtis demonstrates on nearly every page of
his biography. That’s because DeCurtis’s focus is on Reed’s musical
legacy and much of his book is critical analysis of all those albums
with a special emphasis on the more important songs, Reed’s musical
development over the years, and the unique up and down pattern of Reed
sometimes fighting commercial success, sometimes courting it.

I
wasn’t really aware of Reed’s rejection of all the drug and sexual
trappings in his life inspired by his second wife, Sylvia Morales, in
the 1980s. That relationship is but one of many DeCurtis analyzes to
show how both musical collaborators and personal friends and lovers
could be close to Reed one minute and then exiled from his confidence
the next whenever the thorny musician felt he had been slighted or
misused. In some cases, it was simple pride or paranoia or insecurity
that precluded Reed from accomplishing some goals, such as his
insistence he be seen as the main motor of the Velvet Underground during
the failed reunion attempts in the 1990s.

Gratefully,
Anthony DeCurtis gives us a multi-dimensional portrait of Lou Reed,
warts and all, as the expression goes. Wild warts, in this case. If
you’re like me, after reading this book, you might be inspired to track
down some of Reed’s work you didn’t explore before. Most music fans
likely know about the mostly unsuccessful collaboration between Reed and
Metallica and/or the romance between Reed and performance artist Laurie
Anderson. I didn’t know about Reed’s staging of some of his earlier
albums in the 21st century, his latter-day interest in
martial arts and meditation, or his interest in sonic technology and
photography. I didn’t know about the soft-skinned Reed many people saw
when they met Reed during his final days with Anderson until his death
in 2013.

Clearly,
any reader picking up this title will be a fan wanting to learn more
about Reed, the Velvet Underground, or the sub-genres of rock Reed
contributed to or influenced. All such readers will be handsomely
rewarded. Drawing from his own past experiences with Reed, interviews
with Reed intimates, and more basic research, Anthony DeCurtis has given
us what will certainly be the definitive retrospective of a significant
figure in rock history.